Greenup County Fair $200,000 experiences in upgrades

Jay Sizemore, Greenup County Fair Board Chairperson, providing a view of the new Agriculture Building on the Greenup County Fairgrounds.

The Greenup County Fairgrounds has made a tremendous amount of renovations and improvements to get ready for this years fair season of Aug.30-Sept. 3.

Volunteer helping with the lamb barn on the Greenup County Fairgrounds.

The new Show Barn on the Greenup County Fairgrounds.

Volunteer helping with the lamb barn on the Greenup County Fairgrounds.

Portia Williams | Daily Times
Volunteer helping with the lamb barn on the Greenup County Fairgrounds.

GREENUP, Ky. — Those who decide to attend the Greenup County Fair Aug. 30-Sept.2, 2016, will have a delightful experience, guaranteed. The GCF Board has spent approximately $200,000 in renovations on the fairgrounds to date.

Jay Sizemore, chairman of the GCF board, said they have been working diligently since January 2016, on improvements for the Greenup County Fairgrounds.

“This is the new Agriculture Building, the old Agriculture Building used to sit right there where the dirt is, but we tore it out so that we would be able to park horse trailers, and have better access during all of these events,” Sizemore said. “What happened is, we had a fire over in the other building, and we that happened we had to redo that any way, so I said it is just time to do it all. We probably bit off more than we can chew.”

Completing renovations and improvements of Greenup County Fair Grounds would not have been possible with out support, Sizemore said.

“A lot of people had to come together to make this happen. The Greenup Fiscal Court helped us out with labor, and with some money to help us do all of this,” he said. “Then my company donated a lot of time and effort down here to get it done.

There are 20 exhibits inside of the new Agriculture Building, just waiting to be decorated.

These are all of the exhibits where students from the local schools will come in to decorate, and each classroom will have their own little booth. There are 20 of these exhibits, and we have 10 on each side. The kids come from the schools, and the 4HClubs, and decorate and will have it looking really nice,” he said.

The new Agriculture Building will be furnished with it’s own kitchen and restroom, and storage room.

“We’ve kind of made it a little fancier, and it can be used all year round for different things,” he said.

Sizemore’s company, J&L Constructions is handling the renovations at the fairgrounds.

“I used my men from my company to come in here and do the work because we’re not making any money, and we came in here to do the work at-cost,” he said. “This is a non-profit, so everybody working in here really isn’t making any money, we’re just getting paid for our time here, and are not making any profit off of any of this.”

Among the host of renovations is the revitalized Show Barn, where the livestock are taken to be auctioned off, according to Sizemore.

“This is the Show Barn that actually caught fire, and in about January we had to go into the interior and do a whole lot of work,” he said. “All of the metal was stripped off of this, everything redone, these are new tresses, all new electric, fans, everything, with all new bleachers.”

In addition to the new Agriculture Building, they have also been hard at work on the construction of a new horse barn,” he said. “It is hard to describe all of the work that has been done here in the last six or seven months. There have been a lot of improvements, and we’re going to try to just keep improving.”

Admission is $10, there is no cost to children ages three and under, and parking is free.

Kids Day will convene Saturday, Sept. 3, from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. at the bleachers which will include special events for kids for all grades. Kids ages four and older can also ride the fair rides all day for $10 on Kids Day. The Carnival will open at 11 a.m. on Saturday.